


women want us and fish fear us

by ticoyuu



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 英雄伝説 閃の軌跡 | Sen no Kiseki | The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (Video Games)
Genre: ??????? - Freeform, Gen, ashen chevalier/ashen demon bonding, crack taken almost-seriously, no spoilers for cs3 or 3h
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28546044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ticoyuu/pseuds/ticoyuu
Summary: Two teachers walk into a pond. There is no punchline.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth Eisner & Rean Schwarzer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	women want us and fish fear us

Rean Schwarzer is the Ashen Chevalier and hero of the Erebonian Civil War. 

He's also a depressed twenty-year-old shepherding a rowdy gang of kids whose antics, through no fault of their own (usually, but Ash fits the spirit of- specifically, first year- Old Class VII way too much), keep hitting him right where it hurts.

The nostalgia, he means. 

If he didn't know Kurt and Juna better by now, he'd think their incident on the first day was at least a  _ little _ contrived. But no, Kurt's just got cosmically, relatably poor fortune when it comes to Aidios picking a chew toy sometimes, and Juna is... she's... she can be very  _ Alisa _ at times. Rean will just have to leave it at that.

It's almost like he's back in Thors again and his biggest problem was keeping Machias and Jusis from non-fatally murdering each other. ...But also juxtaposed with the tension and near-unwelcome intimacy of their time aboard the Courageous.

  
  


New Class VII are good eggs, even if the whole basket is riddled with cracks. Rean is their one-man lifeline and he's vowed to  _ not _ snap under pressure.

  
  


Unfortunately, Rean ponders drily as another big one gets away, his fishing line doesn't seem to be on board with that particular agenda.

Rean reels in a newly shortened, empty line and rethreads his fishing rod with a practiced ease born of familiarity. He has a lot of spares; fishing is a lesson in patience that is, oddly enough, somehow soothing.

It's the middle of the night and Rean honestly has no idea where he is at the moment. But it's a nice hill with some cloud cover that doesn't quite obscure the night sky, and there's a nice, fresh breeze that smells a little salty despite being nowhere near the shore.

Truthfully, the one thing about field studies Rean has  _ really _ come to appreciate is that Erebonia is absolutely riddled with bodies of water. Therapy is expensive, but fishing is free.

...Actually, it really isn't, and in all honesty it's kind of an expensive hobby, but Rean elects to ignore that. He may not be able to run away from all of his problems, but he sure can avert his eyes from his self-care fishing splurges.

Plus, it's still way easier on his wallet  _ and _ sanity than anything that has to do with G*liath Osb*rne.

Somewhere nearby, some bird with a lousier sense of time and place than a certain old friend of his starts squawking.

Rean sighs.

He casts the line out again, a little further this time.

It's nice, the way his thoughts drift into the distance just like the float on the end of his line.

  
  


===

"Um, hey." 

"...."

"Hello?"

"...."

_ "HEY, YOUR LINE-" _

_ "UAGH-!" _

Completely unexpectedly, the man clad in a pale white coat and sitting stone-still like a sentient puddle of moonlight or something topples forward into the pond with an abrupt  _ ker-splash. _

Oh, um.

Awkward.

"Uh. My bad," Byleth mutters. The poor fellow's pole is being towed out to the middle of the lake by whatever monstrous lake boss-fish it had hooked, its owner splashing along after it in a state of mild panic like some weird fish vengeance simulator.

He drops the weird, freshly-dead chicken he'd picked up and then his black coat atop it, and dives in after the pair.

  
  


====

So much for a peaceful, moonlit bit of fishing catharsis. The  _ one _ time Rean manages to randomly hook a lake guardian just so happens to be the one time his expectations, sanity, and therefore alertness levels had all trailed to a big fat zero.

On the plus side, this is also the one time he's managed to catch a lake guardian. And oh wow _ , _ this thing is  _ phat. _

Rean glances at his new acquaintance. Whoever this guy is, he seems more interested in the fish than the sepith it coughed up- Rean lets him have it; he's more than happy with the orbment upgrades he'll be able to push tomorrow.

"T-thanks," he coughs, spitting out a strand of duckweed.

"No, that was my fault," the other says, eyeing the erstwhile pond green with interest instead of making eye contact. "Sorry I startled you."

About halfway into opening his mouth to argue, Rean has a terrifyingly surreal vision of his youth with Master Ka-fai; specifically the time he'd accidentally broken some equipment at another Eastern training hall and gotten injured in the process.

Suffice to say, Rean decides to just leave it alone. "It's fine," is what he says instead.

Rean's mysterious guest smiles almost mechanically, and then asks abruptly- "By the way, where are we?"

"...Uh..."

====

They sit on the riverbank together, (safely recovered) fishing rod neatly stowed next to their gleaming prize.

"Good thing ARCUS IIs are waterproof," Rean comments, flipping it open to check their location.

"What's that?" 

He glances over to see Byleth- the man had introduced himself as Byleth Eisner- peering at the piece of tech with curiosity that, while intense, nevertheless, showed only in his eyes. Overall, the man's face was less expressive than the literal dead fish laid out on the grass next to them.

"Oh yeah, I guess these aren't really public knowledge yet..."

Rean passes the ARCUS II to Byleth, whose attention seems to immediately snap to its orbment panel.

"Crest stones...?" he mutters, sounding genuinely curious.

" _ What _ stones?"

"These are..?"

"Septium, yes," Rean replies. "Wait, you don't know..?"

Apparently, it's not the cutting-edge aspect of the ARCUS II that had caught his eye- it was the whole orbment itself.

'Eisner' sounds Erebonian, so Rean had kind of just... assumed. Though at this point he really can't help wondering. What is he, some kind of underground-dwelling hermit completely out of touch with modernity?

"So uh, where are you from?" Rean asks, hoping he doesn't sound rude.

He gets a long pause in response. "Um... my dad's from Adrestia. I think? I grew up as a mercenary."

Okay, so... ignoring the completely unfamiliar locale, Byleth's situation sounds complicated-  _ that _ he can certainly relate to.

Rean nods, "I see."

"Also, I wanted to ask- where are we?"

"Oh. Yeah, let's see..."

Rean takes back his orbment, opens the GPS, and remembers he's wandered somewhere off the coast of Sutherland. Everyone else is asleep on the Derfflinger, because it's one in the morning.

"Sutherland," Rean says, like that explains everything. Although it's doubtful Byleth is dangerous in the information network sense, his job still demands secrecy- and since it's inevitable he's going to end up breaking protocol at some point anyway, Rean needs to pick his crimes. And then put some back, because the number of things about his  _ other _ job that he hides a burning hatred for are still way too many.

Rean has to wonder- is he an alien? Or... an archeologist, like maybe a researcher or something. It's not like Byleth would be the weirdest self-proclaimed professor of some obscure field that Rean has ever met. Except he actually feels inclined to trust this Byleth Eisner, unlike some others he could mention.

Or maybe he's an archaism. Or... maybe Rean just really needs to get some sleep. 

  
  


Apparently done, Byleth wordlessly proffers Rean's ARCUS and Rean pockets it once again. And once more, the silent, moonlit night begins to stretch out between them.

"...."

"..."

  
  


"By the way... there's one more thing..."

Movement from the corner of his eye has Rean locking in on it immediately, and he feels like he genuinely couldn't be more surprised to see his new friend pick up his coat to reveal a- a.. medium sized feathered corpse. Its feathers looked fresh and shiny, and it didn't smell... not fresh.

"This," Byleth says, giving the feathered corpse a shake, "what  _ is _ it?"

With a growing sense of confusion, and also of trepidation borne from experiencing countless tense battles, Rean tentatively replies, "It's a chicken..? It's weird that there'd be one just wandering around at this hour, though."

To Rean's growing confusion, Byleth just keeps staring at it wordlessly.

"Do you not have chickens in Adrestia..?" he hazards. Just as he's about to lean over and examine the creature more closely-

The cockatrice chooses this exact moment to open its beady eyes and stare its completely taken-off guard captor directly in the eye.

If a cockatrice could look smug, this one does. It almost makes Rean's heart stop despite the fact that  _ Byleth _ is the one engaged in a staring contest with it, not him.

Except, to his increasing-by-the-second incredulity, Byleth just stares at it right back. And then he comments, sounding partly affronted and partly amazed for what is definitely a wrong reason,  _ "Your chickens are like this?"  _

Rean clears his throat, takes the cockatrice from Byleth and violently wrings its neck. "No, no. I think we have a misunderstanding. Our chickens are  _ definitely _ not like this."

Once its movement stills, Rean peers down at the creature from the corner of his eye. Yeah, it's definitely dead this time. Unlike a certain individual he really wishes was.

"Sorry, I didn't consider the possibility of a chicken-adjacent monster. More importantly, are you okay? This is a cockatrice- their gaze can stop your heart. Er.. turn it to stone, as the story goes. In some places."

"Oh, I see," Byleth nods, like everything suddenly makes sense. "Well, that would be because my heart isn't beating."

".........Excuse me?"

Byleth just nods again, his face as blank as ever. 

For some reason, Rean doesn't really feel like he's being played with, as weird as the alternative would be. Something about the way he worded it bothers him greatly, but Rean consciously puts it out of his mind.

Rean really needs to get some sleep, apparently, so he's just gonna roll with it.

"I... I see," he finally manages to choke out. "That's, um. Neat. Where'd you find it, anyway?" 

Rean clears his throat before continuing. "They  _ do _ show up around here, but not very often. If there's a nest, I should probably-"

_ Go clear it out, before- _

"-oh no, there's no nest. I looked around and found one, but it's been taken care of."

The two make eye contact, surprised but not really surprised, and share a knowing grin. 

"Nice," Rean says, after a brief pause. "You're pretty cool." And he means it, he really does, but he  _ also _ means his next question just as much- "but I have to ask,  _ why _ did you pick that one up and take it with you?" 

Glancing at the dead cockatrice, then at his hands, before finally turning his blank stare on Rean, Byleth gives a small shrug, sounding almost perplexed when he replies, "I guess you could call it an occupational hazard?"

Rean lets his questions go, not wanting to engage in a staring contest with a man who'd just won one against a cockatrice. "Occupational hazard, huh... Yeah, can relate." 

After all, he supposes, his own compulsory habit is how they'd gotten here in the first place. He pulls himself to feet, collecting his coat and draping it over his arm before offering Byleth a hand up. The other swordsman takes it.

Rean hesitates momentarily because he feels like he already knows the answer, but asks anyway. "So where are you headed?"

_ 'Back to Garreg Mach, hopefully' _ isn't quite the  _ I have no idea _ Rean feels slightly bad for expecting, but as far as Erebonia's maps are concerned it may as well have been. 

"In that case," he says, slinging his rod over his shoulder and starting to walk off, "could you come with me for a bit?"

**Author's Note:**

> afterwards:
> 
> ash: damn instructor, whos that guy u brought back  
> rean: ASH I KNOW WHAT YOURE THNKING AND NO hes nothing of the sort. we met while i was fishing yesterday  
> byleth: yeah i even got to try handling his rod, it was a good time  
> ash: :smirk: o i c  
> rean:
> 
> tbh whenever i go fishing as rean in cs3/4 during rest days i just imagine him like *chanting and reeling furiously* head empty no thoughts head empty no thoughts head empty nUUUAUAAGHHH THAT /ASSHOLE/ ok rean chill head empty no t
> 
> @/geckcellent on twitter :D i want them to spar and ash b like OWO at ranged mode sword of the creator tbh


End file.
